Bayonetta Wiki Guide

Welcome to the Bayonetta wiki guide.

Bayonetta is a surprisingly deep, challenging game that can easily hang with the genre's big boys. IGN is here to help you plumb those depths with a detailed walkthrough complete with Alfheim portal info.

... it's been eight years since [the first Devil May Cry (DMC)], so of course I wouldn't create a game that hadn't progressed from those days! Of course, if there hadn't have been DMC, there wouldn't be Bayonetta, which has evolved from DMC. —Kamiya, April 2009

Kamiya directed development of Bayonetta at Platinum Games since January 2007,[17][18] and the game was "more-or-less complete" by October 21, 2009. The group developed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, while Sega—with Platinum Games's original data and support— handled Nex Entertainment to port the game to Sony's PlayStation 3. Shimazaki designed the game's characters to be "fashionable", with "subdued" features. She designed the titular character to fulfill Kamiya's request for a modern, female witch that wears glasses and wields four guns, and the two settled on her original concept for the character despite her work "over a year" on other concepts.[22] Bayonetta emerged as a long-haired, black-clothed witch with a beehive hairdo (in place of the traditional pointy hat) and glasses (which Kamiya "really pushed for ... to differentiate Bayonetta from other female characters and give her a sense of mystery and intelligence"). Conversely, Shimazaki "didn't require a huge amount of effort" to design Bayonetta's short-haired, red-clothed rival Jeanne, who merely wears her glasses on her head above her eyes. She added plumes to Jeanne's handguns to add movement to the design, and thick makeup to Jeanne's face to "make [her] feel like something out of the 1960s". Though Shimazaki preferred Bayonetta, Jeanne turned out to be the more popular of the two witches among Kamiya and the development team. Still, in an April 2009 interview, Kamiya called the former "in many ways ... my ideal woman".
Sketch of two long haired, black-clothed women in two poses, side by side. To their left is a cat-shaped earring. Above the woman on the right are six circular items of gold jewelry. Around them is a white background with Japanese and English text throughout.
Mari Shimazaki tried to make the witch Bayonetta more appealing with longer limbs and adjusted proportions.

Though the game's director "deliberately created Bayonetta from scratch" and has called its story "completely original", he has admitted using "some names from Scandinavian mythology" and playing "about half of" Devil May Cry 4 for research. As a fan of folk music, he also named Bayonetta's set of four handguns after the old English ballad "Scarborough Fair", and its individual guns Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Hiroshi Yamaguchi focused on composing music for the game that has a "nice up-tempo beat" and expresses femininity through female choirs, pianos, and other "'beautiful' instruments"—though some tracks also use pure orchestra or folk instruments—while Kenichiro Yoshimura transformed Shimazaki's Bayonetta design into a game model and used the digital sculpting tool ZBrush to create normal maps for its details. He worked with Shimazaki on the model's makeup, referred to foreign models with similar bodies, and said "I really wanted to get Bayonetta's backside perfect. I guess I am into that sort of thing..."

To Kamiya, the core theme of the game and its protagonist's attacks is "sexiness". He said Bayonetta's ability to transform into a panther reflected the developers' desire to "make her a sexy witch". To emphasize "her femininity and sexuality", the developers made Bayonetta lose rose petals instead of blood when hit, and used a butterfly motif that manifests in her wings (which appear in her shadow and during double jumps), her giant fist attack (a butterfly appears on the back of the fist), and the arms of her glasses. Her giant boot, fist, and monster attacks reveal some of her body—her hair is magically formed into clothes but must be temporarily reallocated to forming offensive weapons—and when the player targets an enemy, red lips mark the enemy's chest; this led IGN to call the developing game a mix of "action and a great big helping of fan service". The game's sexual tone is reflected in its age rating in the United States: the Entertainment Software Rating Board rated the developing game "Mature" ("M", for ages 17 and older) for containing "Partial Nudity" and "Suggestive Themes", as well as "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence," and "Strong Language". (By comparison, Japan's Computer Entertainment Rating Organization rated the game "D", also for those ages; the British Board of Film Classification rated the game "15" for "strong language and bloody violence"; and it is rated "18" under the PEGI system used in the United Kingdom and other European countries for its use of violence and language.

Kamiya had worked on previous games such as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Resident Evil and its sequel, and as such, the game makes occasional references to these games, as well as other Clover Studios titles and various Sega franchises, such as a minigame inspired by Space Harrier.

Sinobi, a Japanese blog known for its early sales data, reported Bayonetta sold 138,000 copies—93,000 for the PS3 and 45,000 for the 360—on its day of release in the country. Media Create reported the PS3 version sold 135,242 copies and was the top-selling game during its week of release there, while the 360 version sold 64,325 copies and charted at number seven. Phil Elliott of GamesIndustry.biz called the 360 version's lower sales figures "a very strong performance for the Microsoft platform, relative to installed base". The two releases fell to number eight and number 15 respectively the following week.[86] By March 31, 2010, Bayonetta sold 1.35 million units worldwide.

A few days before Bayonetta's release, Japanese gaming publication Famitsu awarded the Xbox 360 version a perfect 40 out of 40. The PlayStation 3 version received a slightly lower 38 out of 40, due to scores of nine from two of its four reviewers. As others did pre-release, the two reviewers criticized the PS3 port's frame rate problems; one thought the difference from the 360 version was slight.[89] One was quoted as saying, "the fun is the same, but the controls and overall look [on the PS3] feel a bit more unwieldy than the Xbox 360 one, which is a shame."[90] UK magazine Edge awarded the game a score of 10 out of 10, praising the game's combat system for being both deep and based around clear rules which are immediately accessible and well-taught to the player. Edge singled out the upgrade from Normal to Hard difficulties as "where Bayonetta transitions from the great to the legendary," concluding, "it's difficult to recall another third-person actioner that feels so worth mastering."

Ryan Clements of IGN gave the 360 version a 9.5 out of 10 and the PS3 version an 8.2. In separate reviews for each version, he called the game "stylish, entertaining", and "unique", and its voice work "a bit campy but still extremely enjoyable", but said its "plot is all over the place" and "isn't as skillfully told as game stories like Mass Effect and Uncharted. In his 360 version review, he called the game an "incredible work" with "final moments ... alone worth the price of admission", but said it sometimes exhibited minor "screen tearing and slowdown, which happen during explorative sections and intense action sequences, respectively". He said the PS3 version was "still a fun game" but had "a lot of problems, primary among them being the excessive slowdown and loading":

When the player pauses the game during combat or a cutscene, there's noticeable loading before the pause menu is displayed. There's loading when you pick up an item and there's loading as you scroll through menus. There's even an obnoxious load time just to view a list of save files. For a game that's supposed to emphasize quick action and style, these loads are almost deal-breakers.

Gamearena rated the game 5 out of 10, criticizing the depiction of the heroine, saying "It starts to feel awkward after not too long, and a little insulting, as it seems like the game expects you to leer and ogle her at every chance you get. You are practically begged to actively position her into sexually suggestive poses and maneuver her as you please, and at the same time think of her as a strong and sexy heroine, not some object you can... actively position into sexually suggestive poses and maneuver as you please." The review also discussed the game's lack of mass-market appeal - "Many people found DMC too campy and over-the-top, and Bayonetta makes it look monochrome in comparison. If you don't like the genre, Bayonetta will not change your mind."

The Associated Press review was not as forgiving as most others, where they state that "Bayonetta feels like a game that would have blown me away 15 years ago. (It even pays tribute to Sega arcade classics like "Space Harrier" and "Hang-On.") While it introduces an exotic new vision, it doesn't give us anything to do except fight, and its strictly linear story prevents you from exploring its distinctive universe. It's high on style, but less than satisfying."

Eurogamer rated it 9 out of 10, commenting that "The result is a game that exemplifies so much of what commentators claim has died in the Japanese game industry. A blast of creative brilliance, both technically accomplished, strategically deep and infused with rare imagination, Bayonetta represents the pinnacle of its chosen niche".

GamesRadar gave the game 10 out of 10. Nathan Irvine of their UK division said it "nails ... the epic scale of everything that unfolds before your eyes and the manner in which it's delivered", believed it was better than God of War Collection, Devil May Cry 4, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, and praised its "superb action" and humor (such as "Luka doing his best Assassin's Creed impression by looking moody in an Altair/Ezio style hood"). However, he said "the only time anything makes sense with Bayonetta's story is right at the end", and complained about some of the game's Quick Time Events (QTEs):

... every now and then you’re instructed to complete them mid-cutscene to, say, dodge a falling satellite and the like. The problem is they happen so quickly that some times you’ll miss the prompt and have to re-run the whole sequence again, which is insanely frustrating.
—Nathan Irvine

In contrast to Irvine, IGN UK's Martin Robinson said "it's not Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden or God of War that's the best point of reference but Super Mario Galaxy": he felt Bayonetta, like the Nintendo game, "loves to tinker with the player's sense of perspective, and fights that begin on street surface often wind their way up the surrounding walls". Robinson praised the "fluid, intuitive and ultimately satisfying" combat system and "its conveyor belt of ever-more inventive foes. From the lowliest grunt to the most hulking of bosses", and said, "Even after two playthroughs we're discovering more and more to Bayonetta's move set each time we go back to the game." Still, he felt "a little too much time is given over to the exposition".

GameZone's Louis Bedigian gave both versions an 8.5 out of 10, saying "Bayonetta is one of those rare fantasy games that sounds crazy on paper but is absolutely genius in execution. Every level feels like a fresh journey through a hellish world – which says a lot for a game that is (believe it or not) a part of the hack-n-slash genre."

On December 10, 2010, IGN UK, in an episode of the weekly IGN Weekend Initiative show, announced that Bayonetta was their pick for the 2010 Game of the Year (GOTY)..

Cliff Bleszinski, design director of Epic Games, has stated that he is a fan of the game's "crunchy" game design. Later on, when asked what game in history he would liked to have worked on, he stated Bayonetta.

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